Pipeline marketing for charities

The jargon of ‘pipelines’ and ‘funnels’ has become mainstream in corporate sales speak. What does this mean? Are the same concepts useful for charities?

Pipelines & Funnels

The basic idea of a pipeline is that people come in one end and, if they reach the other end, they are now a client.

A funnel is similar, but introduces an important detail. A large number of people come in at the top of the funnel but only a small number come out of the bottom; only a small proportion of leads become clients, donors, volunteers, etc.

Measuring success

The underlying rationale for these concepts is to analyse the unit cost of lead generation. For example, if you know that a new donor is worth £1,000 over their lifetime and 1 out of 100 leads will become a donor then you should not spend more than £10 generating each lead. From this starting point, each stage of the fundraising process can be objectively analysed and refined.

For smaller charities, such precise pricing may seem intimidating. It may also seem undesirable to measure success only in monetary terms. However, this way of thinking about the fundraising and advocacy process is successful because it is based on a common sense approach to engaging people with a cause. It is successful because it recognises the wide range of ways in which people can encounter a cause and the factors that determine their journey to greater involvement with, or support for, that cause.

A (fictional) example

Jane is a middle aged mother of two. She is increasingly concerned about the decaying state school system in central London but this frustration has so far only been vented to other parents outside the school gates. With the kids out of her hair at school, Jane has more time on her hands and enjoys perusing social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Stage one

Schools Of The Future is a charity that supports teachers working in rough inner city schools. They have recently started to tweet regularly about their ideas and activities.

Jane is casually clicking around on Twitter, which suggests she should follow ‘Save Inner City Schools’, the Twitter account for SOTF. She clicks.

Jane has now entered the pipeline. She is officially a ‘lead’. SOTF have not proactively contacted Jane; they did not even know she existed. But Jane has made one very small indication that she is interested in SOTF.

Jane may be a future volunteer or a future donor. For SOTF, the question is now how to actively move her through the pipeline.

SOTF send Jane a personal message via Twitter to say thank you for following them and pointing Jane to their website.

On SOTF’s website Jane find interesting information about the issues she has been thinking about. A prominent signpost encourages Jane to sign up for email alerts, which she does.

Jane has now moved to the stage two of the pipeline!

Stage two

Over the next year SOTF send regular emails to Jane with relevant interesting and topical information. They then run a campaign to gather volunteers for school support work and email Jane to ask whether she would like to attend a ‘Vision Evening’ introducing volunteering opportunities. Jane says ‘yes’.

Jane has now moved to stage three of the pipeline.

Stage three

After the event, all attendees fill in a card before they leave giving feedback and indicating whether they would like to become a volunteer. Jane finds the prospect of visiting rough schools to support teachers intimidating but enjoyed the evening so ticked the ‘no thanks, but please let me know other ways I can help’ box.

After the event, Jane receives an email from SOTF thanking her for attending and for her offer of help. She is given a number of options, one of which is to sponsor an in-school mentoring project. £20 per month will cover the costs of mentoring one student throughout the year. Jane agrees and completes a direct debit form to commit to this regular giving scheme.

Your charity

Do you understand how people who become interested in your charity move through the pipeline to becoming volunteers, advocates and donors?

What procedures do you have in place to manage your pipeline?

We have prepared a free template pipeline marketing plan for charities to help you get a clearer idea of how this can be improved in your charity, including its impact on your website, social media, email, and offline communications.

• Download template now (.docx)